New online service will hack printers to spew out spam

After a Twitter user hacked over 50,000 printers last week to promote PewDiePie’s YouTube channel as part of a guerilla marketing campaign, a new service has spawned over the weekend advertising the same type of functionality, but for everyone.

Going under the generic term of “Printer Advertising,” this new service claims it can hack printers all over the world to print out messages on demand, similar to the PewDiePie promo hack that took place over the weekend.

“We have the ability to reach every single printer in the world,” claims a website launched on Sunday. “Reservations are limited.”

While email providers do a pretty good job at stopping most spam, there’s nothing standing in the way of Printer Advertising.

A web service like this could be abused to push all sorts of illegal services, such as drugs or crime-for-hire services, or to push political influence campaigns. It’s not that hard seeing printers all over the US spew MAGA or anti-Trump propaganda for days.

Furthermore, some pranksters might abuse this type of service to push pornographic photos, or incite physical violence against certain communities. This very last thing actually happened before, in 2016, when a hacker named Weev sent anti-semitic flyers to thousands of printers.